Okay, so I have previously discussed how poor recovery to Guillain Barre Syndrome often leads to severe fatigue and ME-like symptoms (including autonomic symptoms and PEM, and 2-day CPET results), and often a diagnosis of CFS when the neurologist cannot explain the persistent symptoms. Sadly my father has recently come down with Flu vaccine induced GBS, which followed on from Flu vaccine induced ITP and he is really struggling right now. The heartbreaking thing is this is also likely to end his ability to run marathons, which is his passion. People act like vaccine induced GBS is rare, but here is a case of it happening twice in the same family. Perhaps there are key genetic risk factors after all.
I'm so sorry about your Dad's illnesses. They do seem like they might be a clue as to what happened to you. ITP - is that immune thrombocytopenia?
Yes. The time frame of ITP is different (typically develops rapidly, within 1 week of infection or vaccine) and isn't necessarily autoantibody mediated, though it can be in some cases that take longer to develop after the trigger. The interesting thing however is both conditions are related to sialic acid groups- ITP is often due to sialic acid being stripped off platelets (by neuraminidase for example) leading them to be detected as foreign. Whereas GBS is two different diseases, one being T-cell attack of gangliosides (which are glycosphingolipids with sialic acid end groups) on Schwann cells (which make the myelin lining of peripheral neurons) and the other is antibody attack on gangliosides. I'm not sure what clues apart from suspecting a common autoimmune risk factor. My immediate family also has another case of ITP, other autoimmune disease (adult onset Type I diabetes) as well as lymphoma.
